but this only made her smile. Beth and her indentations! But when she pried the next piece off there was nothing under that either, and nothing beneath the next one, nothing but bare plaster all the way across. Puzzled, she climbed down one step, chipped at the paper just enough to lift it back. Nothing. Nothing on that wall. Nothing, when she investigated, on the fourth wall either.
She felt so disappointed that her shoulders literally sagged, but there was only one possible explanation. Beth must have begun her wallpapering on these two walls the very first day she started. She must have thought long and hard about writing on the plaster, the idea had tempted her and frightened her simultaneously, and her inner debate wasn’t resolved until she had the first half of the room, the first two walls, entirely papered. Then, not able to contain herself any longer, she began writing on the bare third wall and then the bare fourth—Vera’s first wall and second. Continuing on around the room would have meant stripping off the wallpaper she had already hung, and instead of doing that Beth would have taken her story to a room where the walls were still bare and inviting, which meant, logically, the next room down the hall. It was the only sequence that made sense.
The next room down the hall. Vera had peeked in on her inspection trip, but this was the first time she had ever entered the room itself. It surprised her, it was so feminine and cozy, and she decided immediately that it must have been, not a den, but a sewing room, a place of refuge. The knotty pine paper darkened it terribly, but the floors were the lightest, most delicate looking in the house, with maple boards that had been milled and chevroned to form interlocking triangles, then polished to a jewelry box sheen a hundred years of traffic hadn’t managed to erase. It even smelled vaguely of wax, and brought back memories of her grandmother and Easters and brand-new shoes.
Things grew shabbier higher up. A fan-shaped window had lost most of its glass, and the dampness streaming in found the lantern light and turned it plasma yellow. The molding, delicate as it was, hung down in strips, as if someone had gotten mad at it and yanked. And then of course the wallpaper, which seemed an even worse desecration here than in the front parlor.
Which wall to start on was difficult to determine, but, using a book as her template, it made sense to try to the left of the door and work her way around to the right. She went back to the parlor for the ladder and tools, balanced her way up three steps, wiped the sweat from her forehead, shook the hair from her eyes, and started scraping.
Almost immediately she came upon a word, which surprised her, since it was Beth’s habit to indent. Still, she didn’t think much of it—if anything, she was pleased to have located the writing so quickly—but that changed with the second word, revealed when her scraper got lucky and pried off a six-inch strip all at once. It wasn’t Beth’s handwriting, it was nowhere near as neat, and the ink was different—ballpoint, and blue instead of black.
I can’t
The surprise came doubled—surprise at finding it, surprise that her first reaction was irritation. When she had first discovered Beth’s writing the effect had been of a woman stepping into the room and pronouncing the old-fashioned word out loud, credence, and now, having become used to that voice, comfortable with that voice, she was suddenly called upon to listen to another one that already seemed louder, more shrill. But almost immediately her curiosity took over. She dug away near the ceiling and found another word and then another, followed their prompts right across the top of the wall until she had the line entirely uncovered.
I can’t tell a story like she can.
The ink was thin and cheap-looking, recalling those plastic Bics she used when she was in middle school. With the pen held that high to write, there were places where the ink had dried up altogether, the letters becoming little more than cursive white scratches. Some letters were script and some were printed, but it was impossible to figure out what guided the logic, and the line itself slanted sideways like a ramp. It was slapdash, even drunken—the handwriting of someone who cared nothing for rules or consistency.
Who had written it